Objects, Consumption, and Desire: 04Lash-up, Habitus, Actor-Network Approaches Archives

February 12, 2006

a few words

I am very sad that I won’t be able to attend this week’s class- Bourdieu and Becker week!- since I have been ill for days. But I had to say at least a few sentences about Bourdieu with who I have a love-hate relationship (I love him because of what he writes about, I hate him because of the way he writes them).

What comes to my mind about the place of object in Bourdieu’s writing is culture as an object. The separation of form and function is important in the appreciation of an object as an art object. And here, the producer of the object and his/her relation to the social norms is important in the sense that the producer’s intention about the production process is affected through these norms. Bourdieu seems to me standing somewhere between structuralism and …constructivism? That is, the producer (the artist?) creates a world through the art object of his/her own creativity and consciousness; but the cognitive instruments used in this process are made by the norms and so on. This is basically what I understand from habitus. Also, of course, art museums carry an important characteristic for him as institutions where the relationship between different factors, from the production process to the demonstration and exhibition of the art object comes together and we find the juxtaposition of works.

Posted by Ilgin Yorukoglu at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)

Contested Objects in Art and Science

The readings this week trace the social value of objects by locating them in connection to larger object worlds. If you want to understand the creation of a piece of art, scientific research, bedroom furtniture or freezer appliance, start by locating the item in the art field, in the academy and the laboratory, and in family and gender relations. Indeed, as Ettiene posted, objects are a window through which we can observe social practice. A major part of such practice, and a lurking theme I read in Becker, Bourdieu and Latour, involves power struggle and contestation over the value of objects.

Bourdieu's onto class power and its tacit conferrence and reproduction through habitus. Latour observes the contestation over scientific/natural "fact" in trials of strength between the persistent dissenter and the exasperated professor. Lastly, and less obviously, Becker suggests the contestation inherent in art worlds, since art works are produced, after all, as a result of socially-agreed upon conventions. Or socially-disagreed upon conventions, as the case may be.

The ability to break through conventional constraints and produce new art works seems like a good one to have. Such ability is power, and it's weilded by innovators, people with "reputation," and people with material resources. Yet, like all power, it is not free of limits. Innovators are only followed in the right context of a receptive audience; reputation can only last through so many rotten reviews. Given these constraints, it puzzles me to consider how conventions get broken, refashioned, and refied in art and science, and by whom. It seems like you'd have to know precisely which convention to strike against, when, and with a "logically defensible" replacement. Such people *in the know* are, I suppose, those best primed to competence by their access to cultural and economic capital.

So it seems to me that the artistic gift and the scientific discovery exist through political struggle: nature does not lie directly below the lines of scientific texts, and nor does art hover directly beneath the surface of an artwork. They come into existence through challenges of existing conventions, in which power is strategically mobilized against established ways of doing.

Posted by Ashley Mears at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)

Worlds and Objects

I am struck by the significance of objects in constructing and constituting private spaces, shaping architecture and regulating the basic needs of food and shelter. (Clothing too, but that was not really covered – pun intended - in this week’s readings.) Even in private (and perhaps personal) worlds the placement, use and importance of objects conveys social meanings and norms. I was especially struck by Shove and Southerton’s discussion of the freezer, in part because I remember living through the introduction and adoption of the microwave, now a standard design feature in kitchens but then a new-fangled contraption, room for which had to be made on counter-tops. I worked at a local bookstore in the late 1980s and I remember when Barbara Kafka’s Microwave Gourmet was released in the summer of 1987; it became an instant hit. [I wonder if this volume is in BKG’s collection.] While I can see from my own experiences how the microwave has changed habits of food preparation, this article made me more fully appreciate how freezers have done much the same. I was also struck by the parallel between the adoption of the freezer and the rise of the women’s movement. Women as a whole may not have been as enabled to enter the workforce if they could not come home and defrost (and now also nuke) dinner. The discussion also points out the freezer’s role in transforming food: “To stand any chance of success, freezer manufacturers had to persuade people to adopt new methods of food preservation in place of established techniques like salting, bottling, curing, drying and tinning. More challenging still, they had to convince potential users that freezing, which modifies the structure of the food itself, was safe. What sort of preservational magic did the new white box represent? One positive strategy was to announce the freezer as a symbol of technological progress.” (p. 305) Picking up on some of the design discussion of last week, did the choice of white as the predominant color help to signal some of these messages? More broadly, this quote has caused me to add another set of questions in terms of thinking about how objects are constituted: how are raw materials being processed and transformed? What does the object or set of objects offer that is new to human practice or how does it facilitate processes and practices already in place? What new modes of merchandizing arise out of the mass adoption of a new object? (Consider the rise of frozen foods, with us to this day, and the specialty stores and cookbooks that facilitated the mass adoption of the use of freezers.)

The question of gender and work that is categorized by gender is also significant, as is the way ownership of objects and property are characterized by gender, as was evident in the chapter on “Encoding Patriarchy.” It also sends my associative brain to thinking about the ways in which objects are designed to be marketed to and appeal to female consumers, a topic that came up in the readings on advertisements and that always makes me think about the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition called “Mechanical Brides,” which explored the design evolution of the typewriter, washing machine, iron and phone – all staple tools of women’s office and home work tasks in the mid-twentieth century. And, of course, thinking about how products are marketed to women leads me to thinking about how perfume and related items are marketed to women. I note as well that such marketing also addresses men – for marketing to women often entails commentary on how women, with the help of such objects – from microwaves to fragrance – will be able to affect men.

In “Encoding Patriarchy” I was struck by the spaces that women inhabited or were allowed to inhabit and the differences in the nature of ownership of a family shrine and home vs. a “dowry.” The description of dowries being locked away made me wonder about whether human societies have always somehow identified objects that were of special value and needed to be protected; the concept was certainly present as far back as ancient Egypt. Thankfully too – as a museum educator I was always struck by how the concreteness of objects (and rich collections, which could lead to a different level of the ownership of objects and who owns antique treasures) kept fifth graders fascinated by the New York State fifth-grade history curriculum.

Bouredieu quotes Durkheim as saying about the unconscious “In each one of us, in differing degrees, is contained the person we were yesterday, and indeed, in the nature of things it is even true that our past personae predominate in us, since the present is necessarily insignificant… The habitus – embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history – is the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product.” (p. 56) Thinking about the balance between present and past has me wondering about when and why we use objects to signify the past – such as in a family shrine – and when and why we use objects to signify the new and the future – such as with the freezer, especially when first introduced. Somewhere in between is the use of objects in the ordinariness of everyday life, or maybe objects always hold a certain tension between past and future embodied in their use in the present. I wonder how thinking about the concept of “worlds” and object in terms of time work together and if that helps push forward our thinking of objects in any way. Does the concept of habitus cause us to think about people as if they were objects in a way? It feels as if there is a parallel to be drawn…

Posted by Leah Strigler at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)

a bit on art worlds...

One of the things I am still struggling with is my enjoyment of the stories of Borges and their shifting and contingent constructions (Pierre Menard, discussed in Becker; the ‘Chinese Encyclopedia’ described in the Preface to Foucault’s Order of Things) with my ambivalence to such ideas carried out more systematically – exemplified here in the Latour and Bourdieu readings, especially. Although I do see similarities between Becker and Bourdieu in these readings, I’m going to cheat here and just focus a couple of thoughts in regards to Art Worlds.

I am interested in the permeability of ‘art worlds’ - here in the relationship between the type of Modernism espoused by the critic Clement Greenberg to larger society. In his essay, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” Greenberg argues that the role of avant-garde art in society is to keep culture alive in the face of capitalism, and many of the artists championed by Greenberg have a conscious political program. For example, Barnett Newman: “Harold Rosenberg challenged me to explain what one of my paintings could possibly mean to the world. My answer was that if he and others could read it properly, it would mean the end of all state capitalism and totalitarianism.” The juxtaposition involved in these sorts of statements with the realities of an establishment art world in where Newman’s works are shown and sold ties in closely with Borges’ story about Pierre Menard and how meanings can shift.

The other thing coming to mind when reading Becker was his section on ‘naive artists’ and how since they work outside from mainstream artistic traditions, their art could only remain ‘curiosities’ (p. 269). However, there has also been a growing interest in these types of artists (an intentionally passive construction, because I don’t know the story behind this trend), and museums such as the American Folk Art Museum and the American Visionary Art Museum based around ‘naive’ and folk artists. For example, the Folk Art Museum established a Henry Darger Study Center in 2000 and sells the documentary about his life, In the Realms of the Unreal, on its website.

I guess what these two examples are going for is the importance of permeability of these ‘art worlds’ and how consciously constructed ones are not as monolithic as they may presume to be. Greenberg’s attempts to characterize pop artists as unoriginal novelty acts rested on a very limited notion of what ‘high art’ was supposed to be, and in the end did not hamper the importance of works by pop artists both in mass popularity or critical appreciation. Becker’s final classification of the four modes of orientation to an art world, then, of course is contingent on the exactly art world being discussed.

Posted by Mark Treskon at 03:43 PM | Comments (0)

What’s my problem?

This is the question I have asked myself again and again since I started this course. I found it extremely difficult to connect to / respond to these readings until Becker’s writing on ‘art worlds’ helped me find the answer.

As shameful as it may sound, I was not inspired by many of these texts as I was reading them. Then, the discussion in the classes made me realize that it was not the texts which were uninspiring, instead, I was the one who was uninspired, I assume partly because of being overwhelmed by the pages to be read and partly because of the challenges of encountering a discipline I last faced eight years ago. So this week I started my readings as early as Tuesday with a desperate determination: this time it will be different. Nevertheless, I am finding myself sitting here struggling with the same thing again: I find Becker so uninspiring!

Becker offers a sociological approach of ‘art worlds’ by framing those who do art together into ‘art worlds.’ Becker describes and analyzes the network of collaborators of ‘art worlds; his thesis (in my understanding) is that works of art should not to be contributed solely to ‘the artist’ (with or without a reputation), but to a group of collaborators whose work / contribution is equally significant in the process of creation. As far as my experiences go in the European and American ‘theatre world, I am not sure to what extent I agree with this argument. But this does not really matter. What matters is whether Becker’s theorization of the ‘world’ can be applied to other contexts as well, whether the notion of ‘world’ indeed competes with (and triumphs over) Bourdieu’s notion of the ‘field’ as Pessin and Becker unanimously suggest in their dialogue.

As I was reading “Art Worlds,” I assumed that Becker introduced the notion of the ‘world’ to conceptualize the dynamics of the world of art. However, in his dialogue with Pessin, Becker suggests that the idea of ‘world’ applies to every context, which “contains people, all sorts of people, who are in the middle of doing something.” (5) Therefore, the real question to me now is to what extent the notion of the ‘world’ is applicable to other spheres of social life.

Becker explains in “How I Wrote Art Worlds” that two of his main methods in his research are looking for trouble and making comparisons. I find this emphasis surprising, because, in my opinion, these two factors are the ones which are missing from his analysis. On one hand, I agree with those critics, who argue that Becker’s demonstration of the ‘art world’ is too idealistic, and other, more troublesome ‘worlds’ might not allow such an idealistic / egalitarian approach. Becker’s premise, on the other hand, is that each genre of art (film, theatre, photography, music etc.) constitutes an ‘art world.’ As such, the comparison of different (and at the same time very similar) ‘art worlds’ do not challenge / expand his notion of the ‘world.’

Could the world of health care, for example, be described in a similar way? In this world it is the doctor who performs the lead; nevertheless, no hospital could function without nurses, cleaners or administrative staff. It is a network of people, who cooperate via the hospital’s conventions, therefore it is a ‘world’ in the Beckerian sense. Still, can the social world of health care be described without the ‘rules,’ ‘practices,’ ‘conflicts’ socially constructed ‘habitus’ and hierarchical structures which Pessin and Becker both contribute to Bourdieu?

After reading “Art Worlds,” the dialogue between Pessin and Becker, Becker’s How I Wrote Art Worlds” and Boudieu’s articles from “The Logic of Practice,” I started to read the assigned case studies from a convinced pro Bourdieu, con Becker perspective. And what I have found was Bruno Latour’s exciting investigation of the ‘scientific world,’ operating similarly to Becker’s art worlds. Latour’s analysis not only demonstrates how scientists collaborate within the scientific world, but it also reveals how they mutually inspire / influence each other’s production of theories and objects. Nevertheless, I have eventually realized that the reason why Becker’s idea of the ‘world’ is so perfectly applicable to Latour’s ‘world of science,’ is because Latour is not interested in the division of labor within the laboratory at all.

Francesca Bay’s chapters on the traditional Chinese household and Elizabeth Shove’s “Defrosting the Freezer” both focus on the domestic sphere. If we want to continue the distinction between ‘field’ and ‘world’ (which we so don’t want to do!), which theoretical framework would describe the traditional Chinese household and the family life of the late twentieth century? Should we consider the hierarchically structured Chinese households as ‘fields’ and the more egalitarian modern homes as ‘worlds’? I don’t think so. What these case studies help us realize is that ‘world’ and ‘field’ are not two mutually exclusive, irreconcilable ideas. Instead, they complement each other.

I find Bay’s investigation a fascinating demonstration of how the spatially embodied social hierarchy shapes the ‘habitus’ of Chinese women. On the other hand, Shove’s article demonstrates how transformations of our ‘habitus’ influence our spatial arrangements (see kitchens) as well as our relations to the objects around us. Bourdieu argues that the ‘habitus’ is socially and spatially constructed; however, what we find in Shove’s essay is an example how then ‘habitus’ constructs the social and the spatial in our lives.

Lastly, some afterthoughts on Becker:

- I am wondering if “art is a collective activity” (Becker, How:?), if no “consumption” follows at all. For example, if a poet writes a poem, with no intention of publishing at all, is that a collective creation? Would Becker consider that poem as art at all? Or art begins when audiences (or consumers) are also incorporated into the ‘art world’? Can we imagine ‘an art world’ without an audience?

- Becker’s description of “institutional art theory” reminds me Naomi Klein’s argument on brand production. It seems that there is a similar on-going tendency in the art world and in the corporate world: the value-production of the intangible. It is the label (the label of a brand in the corporate world or the label of “art” itself given by aestheticians’) which defines and legitimates the value of an object.

- What methodology does Becker offer us? How should we analyze ‘worlds’? How can we go beyond mere description?

Posted by Aniko Szucs at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)

Identity as Object

Is the construction of an identity similar to the performance of an object? If an object is ultimately unstable, its use (and value) changing during its transition from ‘novelty to normality,’ does identity formation emerge in a similar type of flux? (Shove, 305) It is Shove’s use of the words, ‘becoming normal,’ that prompted this line of thinking for me, combined with Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as actively emerging from past experience as well as considering the potential for future change. The terms: Negro, Afro-American, Black and African-American reflect the changing need to label identity, but with each label do group (world) identity change? And with a perceived change within group dynamics is the group allocated the identity of normal (or mainstream, or white)?

Bourdieu’s conceptual perusal of habitus allowed me to consider a way that systems of group-thought could infiltrate and dominate a group (nation-state). Habitus offers a framework for the rise of an ideology like fascism in the 1930s and for the way identity could function as something like a brand. In this milieu, Jew could be a brand that falls out of favor, is attached with negative stigma (easily revived from a pre-existing history of anti-Semitism) and allocated it’s own symbol or icon (Star of David) which was worn and used to mark members of that brand (as simply and suggestive as Izod or Polo marked preppy in 1980). Imposed order becomes highly regimented. Branding identity proves useful for the potential to dehumanize subjects (as objects) and allows the group to be more easily allocated for other uses like slave labor (or uselessnesses like genocide). Habitus describes the rules of a game where players need only to adapt to a new normal: an architect like Albert Speer produces facades in a new way, a filmmaker like Leni Riefenstal merely reforms the mountain film genre to promote a new type of god-head, the political leader. If the identifiable body is Anglo-Saxon it is allowed membership into the ideological field of fascism.

Shove’s freezer research shows how an object is introduced and subsequently is defined as an identity – the freezer is now a British normal. A system of processes was created to establish normality from cookbooks to kitchen design to grocery store frozen food aisles, so that the freezer could respond and impose itself into the British kitchen (via the garage). This instability of identity is like being queer: 1960s radical habitus encouraged violence and resistance (Stonewall), the seventies allowed for libertine activities, the 1980s saw socio-political resistance to acknowledging AIDS which called for activism, propaganda and DIY politics. And now, like the freezer, the gay agenda is geared towards looking and embodying normal (white middle class): marriage, family, soldier. I can buy frozen peas as easily as a rainbow flag. Like the aristocratic Chinese wife (for she would have to be married), it was initially most important to own books, reading comes later. Is normal a façade, something to be purchased and acquired?

Habitus seems like a way to unravel the black box of identity construction/politics, but also suggests the hopeless possibility that failures of humanity (war, genocide, racism) are human nature. Is our past simply a destiny for our future? This “finalist illusion” is “always tending to reproduce the objective structures that produced them … already realized outcome of identical or interchangeable past practices…” (Bourdieu, 61) Will each generation’s hippy become the next’s yuppie? Bourdieu implies the necessity for systems of power to control the body (hexis), in this way the kitchen (as body) will change to fit the freezer; in a similar way that McDonald’s springs up globally to offer the promise of consuming the manna of the West and with it, the potential for power (money, domination). When in fact, subsequent generations of McDonald’s eaters will assume a different Western identification, that of heart disease and high cholesterol, a different imagined embodiment of color or class or status.

Posted by Pilou Miller at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)

Questions for Becker

As a self-proclaimed and professionally acknowledged artist (who is having a slightly difficult time reading, writing and discussing an anthropology and sociology of art objects), I must say that the Becker reading was frustrating on a variety of levels. In trying to keep in mind the question of who, aside from the artist, is involved in the existence of an art object, I found myself digressing towards questions about what art works Becker has experienced, and how it is that he can make broad, sweeping statements about art when his point of view seems so modernist, and thus limited.

My frustration is, perhaps, that I do not understand Becker’s argument as specific to a study of an art world specifically. That members of a society deem value towards an object, or a person’s contributions to the object, seem to be applicable to any person or practice, whether art related or not. I do not see in any of his arguments why this is specific to the art world, how it defines itself as such and separate from any other world. His examples are weak and I’m not sure what exactly they are based in or on, and as a member of the subject of inquiry, I am curious as to his motivation behind this (weak) investigation. While I am not offended by his work, or particularly feeling defensive about my role in the art world, I do feel a strong reaction to his work, and am curious as to how he came to understand the art world as a sector of society worthy of sociological scrutiny. While I think it’s a valuable endeavor, I find his work under-researched and lacking focus.

His discussion of conventions hardly makes sense to someone who exists in this world and can only be acknowledged for their work if the work challenges the very idea of convention. These art worlds wouldn’t exist, or change, if the idea of convention wasn’t disregarded in order to create. The idea that convention exists in order for audiences to experience and relate to a work is obvious but stunted – one does not need familiarity in order to have any kind of experience, only to have an informed or directed experience. Becker’s examples of convention in art, in order to distinguish non-art from art, are based in modernist ideas about perception and creativity, and I was shocked to see that the book was written in 1982. How a writer, who is discussing ballet and how it’s accessibility to audiences is based in convention, can then not even acknowledge a form of ballet (Balanchine) that questioned these conventional ideas 30 years before this book was published, is irresponsible. His willingness to argue that the economy of the art world is based in students being the most adventurous of audience members (I work in an experimental theater and have seen one classmate attend a show of ours since June), is based in assumption. He discusses modern dance, and how modern dancers are expected to have ballet training, and points out this irony as modern dance developed in reaction against ballet. Yet this is a singular point of view – some modern dance choreographers may do this, but many do not, and have not since the 1960’s. He continually brings up jazz music as an example of a difficulty in discussing the idea of authorship in performance, but never offers the possibility that jazz and blues music do have authors but that historians and scholars interested in documenting art history did not for many years find it important to author or credit jazz and blues music innovators; nor does he question why this is the case. When Becker finally gets to discussing conceptual works, he notes the ever-irritating observation that these works are classified by the fact that “anyone could do them,” but then does not go on to challenge this idea. To be frank, I don’t even know how anyone gets away with saying this anymore, as it doesn’t really make sense (anyone “could” paint Guernica too, even if it isn’t as “easy”), nor is it an interesting, critical or productive observation. In summation, I am at a loss for what the overall picture is for Becker, what exactly it is that he is trying to portray, challenge, question and/or change, and I am unsure of how an art worlds’ relationship to objects is distinct from some other world’s relationship to them.

Posted by Kimberly Brandt at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

Buddies: Bourdieu and Becker

After reading some Becker and Bourdieu I will argue that these two can be seen as complementary. This is opposed to the impression that we are given in Pessin-Becker (PB) interview that the two are in their basic approaches very different. I think the best way to go about it is to see field and world as two extremes on a continuum of socio-cultural conditions that shape what and how people do certain things.

One of the major differences emphasized between Bourdieu and Becker in the PB interview is that field is a space with boundaries where people compete for scarce resources and in this they utilize their capitals but are overdetermined by larger forces while in world they do what they want in coordination with other people. I want to emphasize that seeing the world as people doing what they want is not my exaggeration but although Becker in Art Worlds talks of people being constrained by what other people around them do and the conventions that are operative in a situation in the last instance they are free to go elsewhere and ‘find’ or ‘create’ circumstances (structures) that will allow them to do what they want. To me it seems that what people can do, how constrained or free they are depends on the socio-cultural conditions that they find themselves in, something in the manner of Douglas’s grid and group, where field and world are two extreme points. In PB interview we have an example of this when Becker compares doing sociology in US and France. He says that it is quite easy to do one’s one thing in US because there are so many departments (around 2000). However, there aren’t that many in France and moreover it is more prestigious to be an academic in France than in US, which means that people would be more protective of who gets to be ‘certified’ as a sociologist.

It seems that both agree that there are structural constraints on what people do but Becker’s actor is ‘empowered’ and can move or change her circumstances while Bourdieu’s person is overdetermined by class. Bourdieu actually develops the notion of habitus in order to show how people are shaped by structure and uses idea of capitals (cultural, economic, social, and perhaps some other) in order to show what an actor can do within certain circumstances. Becker only mentions that individuals need resources if they want to make changes around them, which seems like an unelaborated version of Bourdieu’s capitals. On the other hand Becker also does not say what makes people ‘tick’ compared to Bourdieu’s habitus. There is only a brief mention of ‘specific motivations’ in PB interview by Pessin when he summarizes Becker. Is Becker’s approach underdeveloped compared to Bourdieu’s? Do we need to define resources? What about motivations?

In the end, in PB interview we get a feeling that Bourdieu’s question is how social hierarchies are being formed, reproduced, and what are the consequences for social action while Becker wonders how things get done. This is true but is also incomplete because in Art Worlds Becker provides us with a view of how reputations get formed and reproduced. The thing that might be different and I am not sure about is whether Becker says anything about the consequences of stratification.

Posted by Miodrag Stojnic at 01:39 PM | Comments (1)

art world consumerism and the commodification of art

this would have been a more descriptive title of becker's work in my opinion. i have been wanting to read art worlds for some time and i was somewhat convinced and somewhat dissappointed with his arguments. its quite clear from my own experiences that mainstream art is a commodity that is created for the consumers who pay for it. in describing the mainstream art world becker has done a fine job. artists and all the people who make money off of them (some more than the artists themselves) create works of art for consumption. but this dynamic results in a great deal of control over what artists create. if they are to support themselves they must create what can be commodified and accepted for sale.
what dissappoints me about the book is that becker can't imagine any artform that falls outside this analysis. he constantly uses all encompassing words to emphasize that all art is subject to market forces. some art however explicitly removes itself from commodification. of course the example i'm thinking of is the countless pieces of graffiti and other forms of street art, which can't be sold and are not done for profit. given, graffiti artists often ply their trade in a commodifiable form, such as on a canvas for sale in an art gallery. but the vast majority of this art form is done illegally, with stolen materials, and can't be commodified, as it is usually on someone else's property, and as is often the case, they dont want it there.
somehow becker's analysis reeks of the perspective of the "high art" world. where whats for sale is the important thing.

Posted by Robert Weide at 01:29 PM | Comments (1)

Becker is for me, Bourdieu is for the French

The pieces by Becker and Bourdieu seemed almost to suggest a joke, as though Becker was the art-little-“a” version of Bourdieu’s art-capital- “A” discussion of similar concepts. Becker wrote about the production of what is and what isn’t art through references to the properly identified art historical past (modern dance is understood, learned, and performed through it’s counterstatement to ballet). While he did not emphasize the tendency for art history to be discussed as a series of “breaks” with some otherwise presumed linear trajectory of Art as a process, his discussion was well aware of the importance of “what came before” in the development of “what comes next”. Bourdieu, in his long-winded definition of the habitus concept, expended a significant amount of literary energy saying more or less the same thing, though he applied it to a much broader segment of knowledge/practice making (i.e. he wasn’t just concerned with art, he was concerned with the production of all types of cultural knowledge). Bourdieu’s habitus is, “a product of history” that “produces individual and collective practices – more history – in accordance with the schemes generated by history. It ensures the active presence of past experiences (54).” Bourdieu points out that habitus will then logically privilege an individual’s earlier experiences over later experiences, because all experience will shape expectations for behavior and outcome of future experiences. Becker points to the same processes in his discussion of artistic conventions. Mixing authors for a moment, Becker points out that we rely on a previously understood notion of romantic love, a love habitus if you will, in order to properly receive certain works of classical ballet. In other words, the conventions of the art worlds are not just artistic conventions, they are closer to Bourdieu’s habitus.

The world of art, which seems superfluous to the business of life, “unnatural”, is also arguably necessary for the production and reproduction of culture and is therefore a well-sited location for the discussion of the concepts that can seem rather…abstract…when Bourdieu gets into them. Art seems to work out, often with much cognitive heavy lifting, just what underlies this deeply buried habitus. It isn’t left to the independent auteur to reveal for us our cultural operating systems, Becker’s critics and aestheticians get involved to affirm, adjust, or reject these notions. But here it sounds like I am giving Art more esteem than it perhaps deserves. Does art have to be profound, revealing deep cultural weaknesses or preconceptions? What about the quilt makers? Are they artists? They certainly have aesthetic sensibilities that can be treated within the history of textile production generally, and quilt production specifically. Does it matter if quilt makers are accepted by Becker’s aestheticians as artists, capital A? I don’t think it is worth much to get into the Art vs. craft debate, but if all objects are not produced as novel items, but rather become possible only in a particular moment as the accumulation of specific sorts of knowledge, cultural sensibilities, and needs, is every object capable of doing for us what we would like Art to do with a little tweaking here or there? Is the best Art tantamount to an object or performance or way of thinking that attempts to explain its history and relation to its cultural underpinnings? Is it as though art is asking us to see ourselves again, for the very first time? A sort of “welcome, Martians” approach to our own existence? Duchamp asked us to reconsider both the urinal and our conception of Art, and so did Warhol, and so do many artists because art is often about appearing to be an outsider, a non-Artist. Working within our art worlds is not really working at all, but working from without is impossible.

Posted by Laura Noren at 01:17 PM | Comments (1)

Objects of Art - Art as an Object: The MOMA Experience

After being in the exhibition of the MOMA for the first time last Friday, I tried to connect objects of art with the articles we were supposed to read. Dealing with Becker and Bourdieu, I was set back to the question: what is art and can art objects be explained sufficiently in sociological terms?

What was striking me in the MOMA was not only the rush of people (it was Targets Free Friday, which explains quite a lot), but the way people acquire and perceive art. Obviously the paintings at the wall tempt people to look at them; they arouse a desire, similar to commodities being displayed behind a shop window. If visitors want to fulfill their desires, in the psychoanalytic notion of possessing the object, they eventually buy postcards posters in the museum shop. But if we go beyond the assumption which treats arts objects as commodity and the MOMA as just another brand in the art industry, what does an exhibition make with an art object? Firstly, it uproots the art out of his historical context. Every art object shows not only traces of the artist who made it but represents cultural material. Moreover, it is a representation of discourses, technical developments at a certain point in history. Secondly, the exhibition reorganizes the artifacts, putting the paintings in categories: surrealism, pop art, installation art and so on. With a profound knowledge, the visitor can decipher the structure, otherwise she just takes the system of organization for granted.

The habitus (or role as Goffman names it) of museum visitors is determined by convention, they behave as if being in a sacred place. There is no screaming, no running around: the museum as the institution sets rules which the visitors are eager to fulfill. Bourdieus concept of the habitus makes it clear to me, why and how the museum works: through the habitus and its incorporation, the institution attains full realization (see ch.3, 57). And with every new opening of a museum the idea of contemplating art in sacred atmosphere is re-cemented and not questioned at all. And the amazing thing here is that Bourdieu even pushes the argumentation further by emphasizing the fact that the habitus tends to protect itself from crisis and critical challenges (61).
The sociological approach of the Becker to art worlds does not seem to satisfy the function of the museum. Thinking of museums as temples, I rather suggest that the institution reinforces the aesthetic point of art by putting the network of actors in the art world to the background. After all, a visitor is not interested in knowing who was making the frame. The most important aspect is the artist and its art, and people refer to the art by trying to get the „intention“ of the artist and talking about his work.

But still, there is this feeling that the display of the object is somehow inappropriate, that the object lost its magic by being displayed in the museum. Am I totally mistaken? Is it at the end all about Benjamin’s concept of “aura”? Or how can we perceive the specific of the „original“, how do art objects communicate to us? Only if we have perfect knowledge about the historical background of art objects? Only by contemplating about them or by discussing them with others? Do art objects communicate at all? Is there an alternative in the way art is exhibited?

On Friday, though, I left the MOMA being confused and full of questions.
To me it was a similar situation to the one the dissenter experienced in the laboratory: the more you are going into the detail of objects, the more you doubt the reality made by these institutions and the more you see the structure of power hiding in it. Even if the museum seems to be the appropriate way to exhibit art, it does not have to be the only way.

Posted by Teresa Reiber at 12:42 PM | Comments (1)

Objects in their world

This week’s readings demonstrated how objects are linked to a world of social conventions and collaborations. Wether its field is art, science, academia, or the family, if we are to understand how objects come to have certain value, we have to understand that this value is the result of a wide range of social interaction. Thus, objects definitely are a window through which we can observe social practices.

To start, we have Becker’s fascinating analysis of the art world. In the early 1980s, this view of art must have shattered traditional aesthetic discourse. Becker counter the notion that a work of art comes from “The Artist.” In our society, it is impossible to think of an art piece as the result of the efforts of a single person, there is a wide collaboration, direct of indirect, that is necessary for the work to come to life. Most importantly, the value that a work will have within the art world is the outcome of long term conventions and collaborations. Art as we know it is possible only if there is a social world to sustain it, and there is no natural aspect to a specific form of art.

Where the concept of “world” is not clearly delimited (it includes many practices), Bourdieu’s notion of “champ” is more restricted. Like the concrete space of the field, the social field is delimited and not everyone can have their part of it. Thus, the individuals and institutions that have more capital (social, cultural, or economical) will have more power within their field. Bourdieu’s favored example is the academic world, where one has to be accepted within the existing institutions if he wants his work to have value.

Bruno Latour offers a controversial insight into the world of scientific studies. Going against all odds, he suggests that objects of scientific study are “socially constructed” within the laboratory. As Becker’s art world, scientific activity is a system of beliefs, oral traditions, and culturally specific practices. Science is a culture, and is as relative as other cultural practices like art.

In light of these theories, we have two fascinating analysis of objects and how their value is created within a specific world. Francesca Bray analyses objects within the traditional Chinese family. Tablets are said to hold the spirits of the ancestors of a family, and are treated as very important persons. Therefore, the spiritual world and beliefs organizes the household: the architecture of the house is designed in accordance with the value of these spiritual objects, and other objects (altar, bed, coffin, stove) also have their metaphysical aspects. In the end, Bray demonstrates how these somewhat animistic beliefs are important to keep the patriarchal structure alive, and gender roles well defined.

Elizabeth Shove presents an inspiring essay on the history of the freezer. The main question she asks is how come such an object come to have so much value within Western households in a very small time period? The value of freezers and freezing cannot only be traced back to marketing, but has to take into account sociotechnical regimes and systems of consumption. Freezers have to be placed in their “world,” their story is linked to many other narratives, of other appliances like microwave, to supermarkets, etc.

These views made me think of my personal academic interests. In my paper on gay porn superstar Johnny Hazzard (that I am, by the way, presenting at the graduate students conference of Cinema Studies, here at NYU on the 25th) I am asking why this particular performer come to have a lot of value (that is, economic value) within the actual industry/culture. Trying to go beyond the marketing discourse around it, I want to trace his value as a performer in a history of gay sex culture, and in a history of relations between gay men and the porn industry. In a sense, to place this case in the wider world that is a gay public culture of sex.

Posted by Etienne Meunier at 12:21 PM | Comments (1)

Freezers and Movie Seats

Paper idea (for some other class) How Intellectual Work Gets Done: The Potty Break as a Moment for Exchanging Key Concepts.

I was talking with Prof. Molotch on the way from the potty break about my difficulty finding an object for the final paper, and we passed the theater seats, or maybe I passed the folding theater seats and then ran into him. I asked and he confirmed that folding movie theater seats are in fact an object. A store (see last week's blog) is not an object, but a display case within a store is an object. After three tries, I feel a certain elation at having discovered an object. Like archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (sp?) or something...

I'm interested in the folding chair. The folding aspect. Why folding? When did it start, how were improvements made? Would this be in the patent records?

Back to, or along side, movie theater seats. If I apply some of Elizabeth Shove's ideas about freezers to theater seats, I might ask the following questions about the changing positions of movie theater seats "within a web of co-determining practices an arrangements."

Shove talks about the development of the supermarket, maybe for movie theater seats we would look at the development of entertainment forms and seating for entertainment. I think of the Roman Colliseum. Bench seating. I think of chamber music during Motzart's time. Folding chairs have been used by military in campaigns back to when? I have record of a recent 18th C folding chair auctioned at Sothebys. According to an Empire of Their Own, the original movie theaters often borrowed seats from local funeral homes to show the first films... a logical idea since the funeral home had the seating capacity without the continuous need for the use of that capacity. When did folding chairs come in? When did folding chairs screwed to the ground come in? Did Opera pick it up first and the movies follow? Or vice versa?

Shove talks about the proliferation of frozen food, the transformation of the kitchen design, and the introduction of the microwave. I think of the proliferation of movie makers from the early Edison peep shows, to the first screened movies, so the viewer moves from standing up and staring into a machine, to sitting in a store front and looking at a wall, to a theater designed for movies, to the Roxy! (And the brief and lamented drive-in movie theater, where the seat is your car seat...) And now into the home.... Where the marshmallow sofa has replaced the folding seat ..... The location of the movie viewer has changed... The public nature of movie viewing is changing... Where movies in the 20th century changed the dating process (Wexman on Creating the Couple) taking courtship out of the home and into dark public places where paradoxically the couple could have privacy, now the DVD is taking the movie back into the home again, and with it whence goeth courtship?

But I'm still interested in the innovation of the folding chair, how does it serve and not serve? Why is it bolted to the ground? What about those new cup holders? What about the supertitles or the subtitles at the opera on the back of the seat in front of you? But I digress.

I'm wondering if this is a direction a paper could go for this class.

Of course this may have already been done. Have to look it up.

Posted by Andrea Siegel at 11:59 AM | Comments (1)

Simply too Complex

This was my first readings of both Becker and Bourdieu and my intitial thoughts reflects the two blogs already posted- Sarah's 'well d'uh' response and Owen's 'it depends on what you want to investigate' reponse. Becker and Bourdieu are both brilliant in their analysis of social organization. They give others a theoretical framework, stripping away the human experience to its fundamentals. I am worried that once you launch back into specifics about the social world, armed with their theories/systems, issues become unmanageable.

Latour eases my worries by 1. generally making B&B's ideas more accessable to me 2. giving objects a role through the idea of actants. The later is useful when thinking of actants as objects. Objects then become what you hold onto, around what the rest of your investigation can be built on, a refrence point. Explainations of social workings can then move in any direction, economics, ethics, culture, history, race,politics...on and on...can all be investigated and called upon to do your intellectual bidding.

Is this a part of why social science, though still in its infancy, have been fragmented to a point of apparent redundancy (performance studies, museum studies, eastern studies, religious studies and on and on)?

Myself being a student of one of these 'studies', I obviously see a benefit to seperating them, if for no other reason than to find my place in the job market. Seperation gives a scholar someplace to start. Armed with the grounding of a specific discipline, social scientists are liberated by B&B, Latour and Actor Network Theory. Nothing is out of scope for their studies. Examples of this are the writtings by Shove and Bray. Bray's writting is especially illuminating in the way ANT can be used in an anthropological study. The complexities of social life in China are worked through using attributes of the household. At the end of her vivid descriptions and explainations, we are left with a wonderfully complex picture of Chinese social life.

But what now?

After I read the readings for this week I stepped out for a drink. Only to find no amount of drinking can quench my thirst for this question 'But what now'. Though I would like to thank the brewers at Newcastle, the farmers of the hops and barley, the keg and glass makers, the manufactures of brewing technology and all the sippers and movers who make my drink possible. Cheers.

Posted by Jean-Luc Howell at 11:29 AM | Comments (1)

February 11, 2006

Becker vs. Bourdieu - Round 1

In investigating how an object comes to be deemed a work of art, Howard S. Becker introduces a theoretical framework, centered on the concept of the “world”, very similar to Bourdieu’s notion of the field. Becker’s analysis of the art world is an excellent illumination of the networks and myriad people that go into making and validating an object as art. For that it should be applauded. Yet, despite Becker’s insistence that his theoretical model is both different and superior to Bourdieu’s, I believe that round 1, Becker vs. Bourdieu ends in a draw.

Part of my resistance that Becker’s own account of his theory undoubtedly stems from the fluffy, soft-ball questions Alain Pessin lobs his way on the issue of Bourdieu (“Howard, you are a brilliant thinker and your notion of the world is vastly superior to Bourdieu’s field. Can you simply reiterate the opinion I have just espoused and many elaborate if you are so inclined? While you’re at it, can I get your autograph?”). Mind you, I agree with some of his critiques of Bourdieu. His portrayals of fields are a bit too bleak, too deterministic; the notion of habitus is a black box. Nevertheless, contrary to Becker’s assertions otherwise, I see the difference between world and field as a matter of perspective and emphasis. Becker focuses on networks and co-operation; Bourdieu turns his gaze toward conflict and struggle. For certain “cases” one perspective may be more useful than the other, but the argument that one is inherently better than the other seems dubious and is based more on personal preference than anything else.

Becker tries to argue that the metaphor of the world is better than that of the field. He claims that Bourdieu has transferred the concept of the field from physics and implies that bringing it from a foreign discipline unconcerned with human behavior is somehow problematic. However, it is unclear that the word “field” must carry with it the baggage of physics. After all, if we see fields not as invisible forces (the physics definition), but rather as a field of play (as in “leveling the playing field”), Bourdieu’s metaphor quickly becomes as peopled as Becker. Semantics aside, Becker believes his notion of the world to be inherently more flexible and open than the field. But Bourdieu himself stresses that the boundaries of fields are contested, shift and must be constantly maintained. In this there seems to me to be nothing inherently restrictive about the field.

Even if we take Becker’s claims as legitimate, the superiority of one metaphor over the other is dependent on the object of analysis. For a relatively benign world like the art world (and I’m sure my friends who are immersed in this world would balk at this characterization) the open, co-operative world of Becker might be a better fit and a more useful analytical tool. However, if we were to take a more potentially pernicious field, one more saturated with power, Becker’s metaphor seems blindly naïve. In a mental hospital, coercion, power, and struggle over what constitutes mental health are dominant. It would be silly that a mental patient, unsatisfied with his position or role, could simply leave this world and form another where his or her definition of sanity rules. In many contexts, power and disparities in power necessitate a darker metaphor. In these situations, Becker’s world looks woefully naïve.

In the end, the conflict between Becker and Bourdieu represents little more than two intellectuals simultaneously hitting upon similar issues and subsequently fighting it out to see who receives credit. Come to think of it, the situation seems perfectly amenable to a Bourdieu-ian field analysis.

Posted by Owen Whooley at 02:39 PM | Comments (1)

February 10, 2006

Defrosting Bourdieu

I have a book on classic and modern sociological theory sitting on my bookcase, which has served as my beck and call whenever I decide it is time to make another sorrowful attempt to understand what social theory is all about. In it there is a chapter devoted to Bourdieu, which sums up in ten pages or so the key concepts of his work. I have read it many times, including a one-page biography on him, in the center of which there is a black and white photograph of the man himself. And the chapter makes such sensible sense of Bourdieu’s writings, and he looks so nice and kind, and he has had such good intentions and all. And he is dead too, a little prematurely. How very beautiful.

My problem with social theory, however, is that I find it often makes a little too much sense. And so I wind up adopting opposing sociological positions, not really aware of my paradoxical mindset until some professor or fellow student is kind enough to let me know.

When dealing with Bourdieu and his many critics, I get particularly schizophrenic. And so I wound up feeling just that as I went through the readings of Bourdieu and Becker, as well as the correspondence between the latter and Alan Pessin. It all makes a little too much sense.

Putting it a little to extremes, it seems that the discussion of the differences between Becker’s “world” and Bourdieu’s “field” put into perspective the quite fundamental discrepancy between their respective theories. While Bourdieu’s “field” remains structurally structured, in Becker’s “world” you can always do something else.

Seeing that I find that they both make so much sense, however, I do wonder if their theories are really that contestant after all. I mean, could it not be an option that you accept Bourdieu’s “zero-sum-game” concept of the field, and then let the option of “doing something else” exist within that field? In other words, let Becker’s world exist within Bourdieu’s field? I know this is such an overused point, but nevertheless I think there is a certain logic in questioning how Bourdieu would be able to write at all if it weren’t for the option of “doing something else” - at least every once in a while, whenever the structuating structure allows for it. And I do not solely mean this in an abstract way. My bible tells me that Bourdieu rose from an impoverished background. Heavy sigh.

The allure but nonetheless also the dangers of “a Becker”, on the other hand, is that - like it seems to be the case with Giddens - you can not only “always do something else”, but from a theoretical viewpoint you can also always explain it. Either individuals are shaped by society or they shape society themselves. You just pick whatever suits best! (I admit I am not on solid terrain here, this is really just one of those sorrowful attempts to make sense - and non-sense - of it all!).

Now, personally, I do not really need to have a grand theory in which everything makes sense. But sometimes I have a feeling that academics do. Because even when some poststructuralist or cultural theorists claim that all there is, is floating signifiers and that everything is contestant, they try to make a doctrine of just that. I feel I have read so many articles of writers that wind up concluding that we can’t really conclude anything at all.

And so, I find myself once again on schizophrenic terrain, wondering if a defrosted Bourdieu, perhaps a Bourdieu that writes like a Becker, but is a little less moldable than a Becker, could provide a nice and kind framework to actually conclude something about the desire for and consumption of obejcts?

Posted by Sarah Carlson at 08:19 PM | Comments (1)

The Chocolate Lash-up

SmartMoney.com

Sweets for Your Sweetheart

By Kelli B. Grant
February 3, 2006

CHOCOLATES ARE A staple of Valentine's Day. (Chocolate is, after all, believed to be an aphrodisiac.) But will just any chocolate do the trick? Absolutely not. Cupids looking to capture a heart by way of a sweet tooth need the best of the best. We're talking mind-blowing, give-me-more, chocolates.

Tasty Treats
And so, in the name of deep investigative journalism, we taste-tested seven different Valentine's Day boxes of chocolates to see which could win over even the most fickle of hearts.

Five of our contenders are little-known mail-order producers, selected after a visit to New York's eighth annual Chocolate Show in November. We also got a box from Godiva — long considered the standard for high-end chocolate — and one from Russell Stover, purchased at our local drug store.

We limited our choice of boxes to Valentine's Day assortments, or at least those that could easily pass as such. That often meant a box of truffles, but not always. As a result, we didn't rank our results, but evaluated each contender on its own, factoring in taste and packaging. A make-my-heart-race chocolate, is after all, a somewhat subjective thing, although, as you'll see below there were some clear favorites. Read more...

Posted by BKG at 12:40 AM | Comments (2)